Atoms and Alchemy

La tesis: «the mechanical philosophy, as formulated by Robert Boyle, was itself the capstone to a preexisting tradition employing alchemy» — el programa experimental de Boyle «did not stem principally from physics».

El blanco polémico, citado: la alquimia como «a mysterious trifling with impure substances» (Dijksterhuis) — la historiografía que el libro corrige.

La cadena que traza: la Summa de pseudo-Geber → Paul de Tarento → la polémica de Erastus → Libavius y Escalígero → Sennert → Boyle → la gravimetría helmontiana hacia Lavoisier.

El átomo del laboratorio, definido: «An "atom" was simply a chemically identifiable material unit that resisted further division by means of the operations of the laboratory known to him» — corpúsculos «semipermanentes».

La inversión terminológica consignada: en la escolástica «mixture» era lo homogéneo y «composition» la yuxtaposición — al revés que en la química moderna.

El manifiesto atomista de Sennert (De chymicorum, 1619): «qui ex atomis omnes componi, & generationem nihil aliud, nisi oUy«piow & SidKpion, esse statuit» —el griego σύγκρισις καὶ διάκρισις, ilegible en el OCR—; y su reductio in pristinum statum — la plata disuelta, precipitada y calcinada que vuelve intacta: «igne fusorio tamen pristinam formam facile acquirunt».

Newman objeta la datación tardía del atomismo de Sennert (1636) con las cartas a Döring.

El joven Boyle copia las reducciones de Sennert y su «union per minima that is Atomes» — que proviene «de la tradición de Geber» — sin reconocer la fuente.

El polo adversario: Erastus y el principio del reditus — «Non datur a privatione reditus ad habitum in naturalium generationibus» — y su carga teológica: que el arte dé forma natural equivaldría a que el arte cree.

Van Helmont invierte el reditus a favor de la permanencia (las perlas y el argento que persisten «in pristina sui natura»), y su balance de masas es el eslabón hacia Lavoisier.

«Eirenaeus Philalethes es el nom de guerre del americano George Starkey.»

El cierre: «the microworld, in the end, is just as inhospitable to mechanical philosophers as it is to Aristotelians».

«More troubling is the term “atom,” for this word and its cognates in the classical languages had different meanings even in premodern times.» — Newman abre con una cautela terminológica propia: atom es el término que más lo inquieta, porque en las lenguas clásicas ya significaba cosas distintas.

«Unlike the ancient atomists, such as Democritus and Lucretius, the early modern chymists, especially Daniel Sennert, used the term “atom” without the implication of absolute indivisibility, either mathematical (like a geometrical point) or physical (like the atoms of Lucretius).» — y precisa que los quimistas modernos tempranos, Sennert a la cabeza, lo usaban sin implicar indivisibilidad absoluta, ni matemática ni física.

«Despite the fact that Sennert’s usage prefigured more modern practice, numerous other chymists, both before and after Sennert, preferred words like “part” or “corpuscle” for such operationally indivisible particles, mainly in order to avoid association with the problematic mathematical implications of indivisible point atoms and to avoid being tainted by the atheistic implications of ancient atomism.» — consigna además que muchos quimistas prefirieron part o corpuscle justamente para esquivar las implicaciones matemáticas del término.

«Throughout this book I have respected the various authors’ terminology, employing “corpuscle” and “particle” for writers like Geber and Robert Boyle when they eschew the word “atom” (although Boyle’s position on this matter changes over time) and using “atom” where Sennert and others use the term.» — y declara su propia regla de escritura: respeta la terminología de cada autor, corpuscle para Geber y Boyle, atom donde Sennert lo usa.

«One thesis of this book is that the scholastic alchemists, unlike other scholastics who lacked experimental experience, came up with something approximating the modern idea of the chemical bond» — una de las tesis del libro, dicha en primera persona: los alquimistas escolásticos, a diferencia de los escolásticos sin experiencia de laboratorio, llegaron a algo cercano a la noción moderna de enlace químico.

«These terms derive from the Latin of the medieval scholastics (smixtio, miscere and compositio, componere), but their modern meanings have come to have a sense almost opposite to their medieval one.» — y la inversión terminológica que hay que tener presente para leer la fuente: mixtio y compositio medievales tienen hoy un sentido casi opuesto al suyo.

«In short, my use of “reversible reaction” has nothing to do with the modern notion of chemical equilibrium but rather with the alchemists’ rebuttal of the strict Aristotelian concept of “perfect mixture,” according to which (at least in the eyes of the major scholastic schools of thought) there was no possibility of reversing the process that we now refer to as a chemical reaction.» — Newman acota su uso de reversible reaction: no remite al equilibrio químico moderno sino al rechazo alquímico de la mezcla perfecta aristotélica.

«I use this term consistently in the way that alchemists used it, namely, to mean the “leading back” of a thing (in accordance with the Latin original of the word, reducere—“to lead back”) to its original state after it has undergone some significant change.» — y define reducción por su latín, reducere, como el llevar de vuelta una cosa a su estado original tras un cambio: es el sentido de los alquimistas, no el moderno.

«Over the three and a half centuries since the young Boyle made this association, Bacon has come to represent the founder of experimental science, while the name Sennert, even to most educated people, stands for nothing at all.» — el contraste que le interesa datar: en tres siglos y medio Bacon quedó como fundador de la ciencia experimental y el nombre de Sennert dejó de significar nada.

«Although in recent years it has come to light that Boyle tacitly borrowed fundamental aspects of his experimental corpuscular theory from Sennert, he also significantly modified the German academic’s ideas.» — y su formulación del préstamo: Boyle tomó tácitamente aspectos fundamentales de su teoría corpuscular experimental de Sennert, aunque también modificó al académico alemán.

«Steven Shapin hints at this in the opening lines to his survey of the subject— “There was no such thing as the Scientific Revolution, and this is a book about it.» — cita a Shapin abriendo su propio panorama, para situar el escepticismo actual sobre el rótulo Revolución Científica.

«Whether one accepts the term “Scientific Revolution" or not is of little consequence for my narrative, however.» — y se abstiene expresamente de la disputa: aceptar o no el rótulo es de poca consecuencia para su relato.

«Yet neither of these works focuses on the role of matter theory, which I view as having undergone a sea change at the hands of medieval and early modern alchemists.» — objeta a los panoramas recientes, con un grado de certeza declarado, que ninguno atiende la teoría de la materia, que él ve transformada de raíz por los alquimistas.

«I see Boyle’s mechanical philosophy as having been indissolubly linked to his chymical researches, whereas Clericuzio’s work erects an artificial dichotomy between Boyle’s mechanism and his chymistry.» — y objeta a Clericuzio por su nombre: erige una dicotomía artificial entre el mecanicismo de Boyle y su quimística, cuando Newman las ve indisolublemente ligadas.

«At the beginning of the seventeenth century, only a generation before the birth of Isaac Newton, atomism was not widely upheld in Europe.» — la datación que sostiene la sorpresa del libro: a comienzos del siglo XVII, una generación antes de Newton, el atomismo no estaba extendido en Europa.

«Material change was generally explained not by the association and dissociation of microscopic particles but rather by the imposition and removal of immaterial forms.» — y el marco que dominaba: el cambio material no se explicaba por asociación y disociación de partículas sino por imposición y retirada de formas inmateriales.

«More than this, it was commonly believed that the ingredients of “genuine mixtures"—many of which we would today call “chemical compounds”—were not capable of being retrieved from their combined state at all.» — más aún, se creía que los ingredientes de las mezclas genuinas no podían recuperarse en absoluto de su estado combinado.

«Regardless of these roadblocks in traditional matter-theory, however, by the time that Newton had reached his maturity it was possible to assume without serious argument that matter was composed of minute yet robust corpuscles and to uphold the reversibility of chemical combinations with similar ease.» — Newman fecha el vuelco: hacia la madurez de Newton ya podía darse por supuesto, sin discusión seria, que la materia se compone de corpúsculos diminutos y robustos.

«Can one even imagine the work of Dalton or Berzelius without the underlying belief that enduring material units with identifiable chemical characteristics were responsible for chemical composition?» — y lo lleva al siglo XIX en forma de pregunta: no se concibe la obra de Dalton ni la de Berzelius sin la creencia subyacente en unidades materiales duraderas de carácter químico identificable.

«And yet a reading of the existing survey literature on the Scientific Revolution gives practically no inkling of the role that alchemy played in that transformation» — su objeción de fondo a la literatura de panorama: no da la menor idea del papel que la alquimia jugó en esa transformación.

«Older accounts of the mechanical philosophy, with a few important exceptions, routinely picture Boyle and his peers as drawing mainly on the self-styled opponents of Aristotle such as Gassendi and Descartes and on the ancient atomists for their corpuscular theory— certainly not on alchemists.» — y detalla la imagen recibida, que hace a Boyle y a sus pares deudores de Gassendi, Descartes y los atomistas antiguos, ciertamente no de alquimistas.

«Boas Hall, however, erected an anachronistic dichotomy between early modern “chemistry” and “alchemy” that served to legitimize the former as the discipline of Robert Boyle while casting the latter in the role of obscurantist impediment to scientific progress.» — objeta a Boas Hall por su nombre: erigió una dicotomía anacrónica entre química y alquimia que legitimaba la primera como disciplina de Boyle.

«Yet this does not of itself account for the derision with which Herbert Butterfield, in his celebrated Origins of Modern Science (1949) would dismiss historians of alchemy as being “tinctured with the same type of lunacy they set out to describe.» — y consigna la burla de Butterfield, en sus célebres Origins of Modern Science, contra los historiadores de la alquimia.

«Even E. J. Dijksterhuis, whose important work The Mechanization of the World Picture (appearing in Dutch in 1950 and in English in 1961) gave intelligent descriptions of alchemical corpuscular theory and the medieval theory of mixture, could only see folly in Boyle’s pursuit of the aurific art.» — de Dijksterhuis reconoce las descripciones inteligentes de la teoría corpuscular alquímica, y le objeta que en la busca áurea de Boyle solo veía necedad.

«In order to study it seriously, one must decidedly either be interested in the pathology of thought or, with C. G. Jung, be able to relate the subject to the areas of present-day depth-psychology.» — el pasaje de Dijksterhuis que Newman transcribe entero: para estudiar la alquimia en serio habría que interesarse por la patología del pensamiento, o bien, con Jung, ligarla a la psicología profunda.

«The most influential proponent of this perspective has undoubtedly been Marie Boas Hall, whose “The Establishment of the Mechanical Philosophy” (1952) is still widely cited as a definitive study of early modern corpuscular theory.» — sitúa el origen de esa perspectiva en Boas Hall y su The Establishment of the Mechanical Philosophy de 1952, todavía citada como estudio definitivo.

«It is fair to say that the traditional view of alchemy represented by Butterfield, the Halls, and many other writers on early modern science has found a new home in the most recent surveys of the Scientific Revolution» — y adjudica la continuidad: la visión tradicional de la alquimia, la de Butterfield y los Hall, encontró casa nueva en los panoramas más recientes.

«Shapin’s imposition of modern categories onto seventeenth-century chymistry is particularly ironic in view of his own extensively argued case for a “contextualist” history of science that would avoid the anachronistic excesses of those historians who have focused on the internal development of their subject.» — la objeción a Shapin, con su nombre: le resulta irónico que imponga categorías modernas a la quimística del XVII quien más ha argumentado por una historia contextualista.